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Junk food – for real 2
I did make those burgers for dinner today – with homemade BBQ sauce and hamburger dressing and all. Only the ketchup and the mayonnaise in the dressing were not made from scratch, even though there were recipes for that in the Junk food book. I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me this fast food faux pas.
Do you too see a face in this picture? She’s frowning, right? -
Recipe – Make your own nutella
The hazelnut chocolate cake deliciousness from earlier reminded me of one of my favorite homemade things. Homemade nutella. I came across this recipe when I got into the low-carb thing. I am not that strict about it anymore as I was then but I still use birch tree sugar.*
Obviously you can use any sweetener you like – and it’s still home-made nutella. In all fairness: it doesn’t taste exactly like nutella. In my opinion, it tastes better. Plus, it’s easy, fast to make, with no exotic ingredients (except the coconut fat), and some might even say: healthy. I don’t know if I would go so far considering that I probably eat way too much of it at once. I would however go so far as to say that – as anything home-made, and thus made with love and care – it is a healthier alternative to the stuff from the store.
You need:
- 2 cups of ground peeled hazelnuts
- ca. 4,5 to 5,5 tbs of sweetener (just use how much you like)
- 3 tbs cocoa (the raw stuff for baking, not the sweetened ready-made stuff for chocolate milk)
- coconut fat – I start out with 2 tbs, see how the texture turns out, and add till it’s right
- a dash of vanilla
Just put everything into a blender and, well, blend. Add whatever you feel needs adding according to your preference. Done. It lasts … well, I don’t know, in our household never long enough for me to actually figure out a best before date.
Hazelnutty for you! * Birch tree sugar is a form of xylitol, which doesn’t up the blood-sugar level so much. I like it best out of all the alternatives because although the sweetness is different from the taste of sugar, I don’t feel “cheated”. Stevia just tastes like licorice to me, so that’s no real alternative if you ask me. I make sure I buy it at a health food store because xylitol can also be made from – guess what – GMO corn.
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Junk Food – for real
I am not only a hoarder when it comes to thrift-stores, no, I also hoard books. Library books. I cannot praise Gothenburg’s library enough – free membership, branches in every part of town, a huge selection, and, the best of all (yet also my downfall, as will soon become apparent): you can borrow a lot of items at once. I mean it: A LOT. You’re not supposed to borrow more than five at a time but there is no mechanism in the scanner that prevents you from checking out more.
I try to be reasonable but what does happen to me a lot is, that I go to one of the libraries (they are nice places to hang out in town when it’s cold outside and you’re waiting for someone), and I find something that interests me. Lately mostly cook books, and diy related stuff. Mainly because those are really nice to look at, and inspiring, and also: expensive, so I wouldn’t buy them. What happens next then is me thinking “Oh, I want to borrow this one. But wait, I already have so many books at home. But if I don’t check this one out now, I’ll probably forget the title, and what if it’s not there anymore next time I come here?!” So… you get the picture.
This past week I borrowed a cook book, which makes me want to cook/bake through every single one of its recipes. It’s called Junk Food – på riktigt. I’d translate that with: Junk Food – for real. It combines two interests of mine – junk food and health. Health is obviously relative, in this case I mean that the food is made from the best ingredients possible (because you’re the one making it, duh), no funny business like preservatives, flavorings, etc. So the book has recipes for how you make all the classic junk food meals from scratch. Get this: there is even a recipe for how you make marshmallows!? I’m in love. Also, the food photography is really appealing – lots of vibrant colors.
I am planning on making hamburgers (including making my own bbq sauce and hamburger dressing) tomorrow but since the dough for the buns is a yeast dough, I prepared that tonight (fresh yeast dough tastes great but it is basically a guarantee for a stomach ache).
The yeast dough is rising under one of my beloved Kate Bingaman Burt kitchen towels. Ok, I admit – I just included this pic to have an excuse to show off one of my beloved Kate Bingaman Burt kitchen towels. 
Turmeric is what makes them look so nice and yellow. So, thank you Gothenburg library. I actually think I will purchase this book.
To be continued … -
Recipe – Angie’s Flourless Hazelnut Dark Chocolate Cake
It is as divinely delicious as it sounds – and it’s gluten-free! I’d also like to think that it has to do with Ayurveda in so far as Ayurveda is all about pursuing happiness. This cake definitely made me happy. I am spoiled when it comes to mushy chocolate cakes since I live in Sweden. Swedish kladdkaka (mud cake) is the best, in case you didn’t know. I am very patriotic (or whatever it is called when a foreigner is that) that way. I am just telling you this so you fully comprehend what I am saying when I say the following: Angie’s Flourless Hazelnut Dark Chocolate Cake is the best muddy chocolate cake I have made/eaten. Ever.
Just the way I like my chocolate cake: chewy on the outside … 
… and real muddy in the center. 
And did I mention that it’s real hazelnutty, too? -
Ginger – my best f(r)iend
After having had the most horrible stomach aches after pretty much every meal for two weeks now, I finally seem to have found the root of all evil: my beloved ginger!?
First off, yes, I am aware of the irony of me being on such a health trip, and at the same time not really taking any time to look into (or have someone look into) this problem. My stomach was burning after seemingly anything I ate, my digestion was a nightmare – yet I kind of didn’t do anything about it. I attributed this to the sudden changes in my lifestyle I’ve been making, and just hoped it would go away once my body would adjust. As the saying goes, it’s easier to see the splinter in other people’s eye than the log in your own. So maybe this was karma.
I just don’t like going to doctors, especially not here where you don’t even have a specific doctor you go to – you go to a so-called health center, and you’re assigned whoever happens to be on duty that day. Plus I get the impression that the medical practice here is very “traditionally western”. It seems to me that antibiotics are subscribed as if they were skittles. I am just not into that.
Yesterday however I started looking up doctors in town with an Ayurvedic background or a homeopathic one, willing to bite the bullet, and pay for a consultation outside the tax-funded mainstream health system. Then Peter and I had a heated discussion about my state, his concerns that I was downplaying it, etc. And somehow, I don’t remember exactly how, we realized that the number one food that I have increased my intake of since I got into Ayurveda was ginger. It suddenly dawned on me that all the times my stomach couldn’t tolerate a meal, I had added ginger, and I had done that with about anything since it’s supposed to be so good in so many respects.
Perfect example of how there really is no universally valid recommendation, that it always depends on the particular case. For now that I’ve come to this conclusion I suddenly have been able to see all the lines where it says in which cases not to eat ginger – and they were all the symptoms that I had, or rather: developed in a chain reaction after continuing to eat ginger (high metabolism/high Pitta, diarrhea, all that good stuff).
So, today I avoided ginger, drank peppermint tea in the morning to soothe the stomach – and I haven’t had problems all day. I guess I did get around consulting an expert this time after all, and became a little more of my own expert (not sure whether that really is the take home message from this ordeal though).
I did discover one quick remedy (or rather: Peter pointed me to it), which is obviously no solution for the actual problem but which helps the immediate symptoms, and sometimes that is needed: baking soda. Just dissolve about a tea spoon or so in a glas of water, and drink – works within minutes. Baking soda seems to be good for a lot of things, so I guess there is a post about it in the future …
